It is the future that may one day have our computing needs satisfied by a monitor, cell phone and/ or connection to the internet. Everything else will be accessible via the cloud from accessing business applications and other software to storage all on a server hosted by someone else.
Cloud computing has been confused with Grid computing which is a method of combining many computers to form a cluster of networked systems that are capable of performing large tasks.
It would seem, however, that the convergence of Grid and the Cloud will someday happen to offer something even larger.
It is no wonder that so many companies especially the elitists of the data center industry are building and expanding new facilities every month. If the cloud is the next wave they are ready to ride it in.
The most recent of cloud computing announcements comes from IBM. They have opened four new cloud computing centers in emerging markets. They are in Sao Paulo, Brazil; Bangalore, India; Seoul, Korea; and Hanoi, Vietnam, where there is an increasing demand for Internet-based computing models and skills to help companies compete in highly competitive environments.
With previously opened centers in both emerging and mature markets, IBM now has 13 cloud computing centers, the world's largest network of expertise on cloud computing.
If the power and rising cost trend continues it is likely that companies will begin to look ever closer at this option that will provide them a data center without having to man it.
IBM has been perfecting the cloud computing model for clients around the world. For instance the new facility in Brazil will generate business such as massive scale collaboration programs. As Internet users in Brazil acquire more mobility, cloud computing will make Web-based business operations more efficient.
"Cloud computing is emerging as a fundamental change in IT approach," said Dr. Willy Chiu, vice president of IBM High Performance On Demand Solutions. "It is a key element of the evolution to a New Enterprise Data Center, and a powerful tool for efficient operations, especially in growth economies."
The "Cloud" is not only getting attention at the facility level, but at the OS level several new players in the operating system (OS) market have evolved mainly to compete in the niche cloud market.
Recently VMware announced its new Virtual Data Center Operating System (VDC-OS) and now Google who owns the internet browsing market sees an opportunity to compete against Microsoft by offering its own OS or let us say a web browser that will be fully compatible to handle the future of cloud computing.
If the portal to the cloud is through a web browser then you bet that Google is not going to allow Microsoft to jump into their turf. Therefore, Google has stepped up and has announced its "Operating System" called Chrome.
Calling Chrome an operating system may be stretching it a bit, but it is directly designed for the Cloud computing future and will likely become the cloud operating environment.
Finally, Intel and Oracle are teaming up to implement standards of security and efficiency, and for the overall improvement of cloud-based computing. The two companies are seeing the potential of cloud computing's professional use, and therefore are proceeding to provide a measure of standards and security to the concept, with enterprise users in mind.
The collaboration will be centered on marrying the Intel's Virtualization Technology (VT) with Oracle grid computing solutions like the Oracle database, Real Application Clusters (RAC), Automatic Storage Management, Application Grid, Enterprise Manager, and VM.
In helping with standardization, Intel and Oracle said that they will work with other companies to help develop provisioning and managing specifications for cloud-based systems, and would also help in developing standards for the portability of Virtual Machine images, like the Open Virtual Format.
Keep looking up because the "cloud" is getting bigger.
